Where do import drugs disappear?

Patients and pharmacists are waiting for new shipments of tablets and ointments, and suppliers for price unfreezing.

Readers began reporting to the editorial office of "Komsomolskaya Pravda in Belarus" about problems with a purchase of medicines. Here are just a few examples. Alexander was looking for imported eye ointment, but learned that the drug registration in Belarus was over and would not be extended. Pharmacy help desk said there were no cheaper analogues in sale then, but deliveries were expected.

Valiantsina did not manage to find imported cough remedy prescribed to the child and a drugstore advised: "Don't waste your time, and buy mucaltinum".

I was surprised when for a request for an import analogue of Belarusian drug I was answered: "We are a state pharmacy, we have only domestic drugs". Earlier pharmacies sold drugs of different manufacturers.

-It's most likely it was implied that the imported product was not available at that moment, RUP «Belpharmatsiya" reassured. - It cannot be that there are only belarusian drugs in state pharmacies.

Last year rumor had it that Belarusian drugs would displace imported ones. Companies will allegedly be denied in drug registration if there are analogues produced in Belarus. Valery Shauchuk, the Deputy Minister of Health, assured that this cannot be as it contradicts the law. Now the Ministry of Health says that the lack of some medicines in pharmacies is a temporary phenomenon. In the rare case drugs from a previous shipment are sold out and a new one is not delivered.

But the Ministry of Health has not lifted the ban on drugs price increase. Perhaps it is against providers' interests to import drugs in Belarus, isn't it? Representatives of pharmaceutical companies supplying drugs are extremely reluctant to comment on the situation. Those with whom we have managed to communicate with recognize: really, deliveries had to be suspended due to price freeze. Pharmacies sell out residual stock, and supplies are waiting for the ban to be lifted. "The current price control is a greater problem than a 50 per cent amount of Belarusian drugs in pharmacies in the near term", one of the interlocutors said.